Bits And Bobs

WHO'S HE KIDDING?:

According to the Guardian, Tommy Hilfiger is the great-great-great-nephew of Scots poet Robbie Burns. Apparently, Tommy's 71-year-old aunt Rose Kirbis spilled the beans after her nephew's latest ad campaign featured the look that requires men wearing kilts on hilltops. What's next? Sporrans with logos?

THAT'LL DO NICELY:

American Express have commissioned their first designer credit card, with Alexander McQueen doing the honours. Five hundred limited-edition McQueen cards have been produced to launch the new Amex blue credit card system "for consumers with an independent and modern outlook". Does this mean they don't faint when they get their bills?

FASHION MAKES AN EXHIBITION OF ITSELF:

The National Portrait Gallery is doing swimmingly well. Its exhibition "The Varnished Truth: Photographs from Vogue, 1945-55" attracted 141,000 visitors last year, catapulting the exhibition into Art Newspaper's 100

best attended shows for 1997.

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM:

Model Sophie Anderton (left) seemed to be reunited with loaded Lord's son Robert Hanson when they turned up to the premier of Armageddon joined at the hip. Poor Sophie, who's been through the mill with a drunk-driving charge and an alleged overdose, looked all gooey in the Evening Standard with her beau.

MINI STATEMENT:

Kate Moss, Paul Smith and David Bowie have each created a paint-work design for the Mini automobile. Brian "all women are bastards" Sewell had a pot-shot in the Evening Standard at the lovely Kate's endeavours. "To be a design it must at least be functional and relevant," he opines, "but Miss Moss, a model it seems, knows nothing of such matters and, inspired by Miss Muffet, has chosen to paint her Mini with a spider's web. Lord knows why." Ah, the mysteries of art.

COURTING DISASTER:

The fashion designer Amanda Wakeley, one of Princess Diana's favourites, paid an undisclosed amount of money as settlement with an employee, the day before her company was due to appear before an industrial tribunal. Lorrydriver Gurpreet Singh Mundy accused her company of racial discrimination and victimisation after Wakeley's husband, an Australian property developer, had used the word "Paki" in front of Mr Mundy, who later lost his job.

FISHING FOR COMPLIMENTS:

Former Nicole Farhi model Dawn Little proved she's a dab hand at selling fish when she carved a niche in the male-dominated Billingsgate fish market in London. The daughter of a fish merchant forwent a plaice (sorry) on the catwalks of London to flog cod. "I have no regrets, I'm glad I did the modelling but I prefer showing off my brain to my body," she said in the Evening Standard.